e arrived in Greece thissummer just as street-ghting broke over Athens. For days the police rainedtear gas on the people who occupiedthe capital’s main Syntagma Square.People would disperse and reormright on the steps o the parliament.Te subways were turned into med-ical centers or the wounded.Tere is a worldwide movemento rebellion and resistance build-ing. What started in unisia andEgypt has shaken and overthrowngovernments, then jumped to Spainto Greece to England — and now to New York City and across theUnited States.In Greece a generation is wakingup. Tey call themselves the Indig-nant. Tey reject old politics andthe old parties. Tey reuse to acceptthe cutbacks and austerity mea-sures imposed by the global banksand the European Union. Tey aredetermined, angry and righteous.Tey had challenges in Greece.Right-wing ultra-nationalists triedto inltrate the movement. Policeattacked. Some tired let partiescondemned the movement say-ing it’s not ocused on elections orminor reorms.One popular symbol is the heli-copter: the people want the Greek government to leave, resign, y intoexile. Or just get the hell out. And why not here? I the people o Egypt can run out Mubarak, why can’t we run out the American politicians who serve the banks and brutalize us?Te banks are global. Tey haveglobalized their sweatshops andcutbacks. We are globalizing therebellion. A young woman who is active inthis Greek movement o the squarestold us:“I didn’t involve mysel withpolitics directly until 15-year-old Alexandros Grigoropoulos waskilled by police three years ago. Anhour ater the murder, riots startedeverywhere — i you were youngand a bit active, you couldn’t helpbut participate.“Tis murder was just thebeginning or people who wereoppressed by the system. Ater the1980s the actories were closing, andthe youth o Greece ound it hadnothing. In 2008 unemploymentreached a critical point.”Crisis, unemployment, cutbacksand police murder. Isn’t this what we ace here too?In Greece, we were asked repeat-edly: What is happening in theUnited States? Will you join us? What are you doing?Now we can answer: We aremoving here too. We are learning. We are reaching out. We don’t have to accept the worldimposed on us by banks, politiciansand police. We are the uture.

by

eric

ribellarsi

and

jim

weill

The RevoluTionBegins aT home

Wall Street Protests Enter Third Week

Laning   Wl

Economic SHocK, SociAL cRiSiS:

Tens o thousands challenge the Greek government and European bankers at the ThessalonikiExpo, Sept. 10. Police deployed military-grade tear gas against the largely peaceul protesters.

THiS iS WHAT An occUPATion LooKS LiKE:

Music and mass democracy break out at Liberty Square, just north o the New York Stock Exchange. Working groups ormedia, arts & culture, ood, childcare, direct action and the democratic General Assembly meet each day to strategize the next moves orward.

Photo: Jed Brandt

W

hat is occurring on Wall Street right now is remarkable. For overtwo weeks, in the great cathedral o capitalism, the dispossessed haveliberated territory rom the nancialoverlords and their police army.Tey have created a uniqueopportunity to peaceully shit thetides o history like the sit-downstrikes o the 1930s, the civil rightsmovement o the 1960s and thedemocratic uprisings across the Arab world and Europe today.Our system is broken. More than25 million Americans are unem-ployed. More than 50 million live without health insurance. Perhaps100 million live in poverty. Yet theat cats are showered with billions intax breaks while politicians competeto turn the screws on the rest o us.Te Wall Street occupation canorce those in power to oer conces-sions as happened this year in Spain,Greece and Egypt. No one can say how many people it will take or how things will change exactly, but i weunite there is a potential to trans-orm a corrupt political process andrealize a society based on humanneeds, not hedge und prots. Ater all, who would have imag-ined a year ago that unisiansand Egyptians would oust theirdictators? At Liberty Plaza in Lower Man-hattan, thousands gather every day to debate, discuss and organize whatto do about our ailed system that hasallowed the 400 Americans at the topto hoard more wealth than the 180million Americans at the bottom.It’s astonishing that this estivalo democracy has sprouted on thistur: where the masters o the uni-verse play the tune that both politi-cal parties and the media dance to.Te New York Police Department, which has deployed hundreds o ocers to surround and intimidateprotesters 24/7, could arrest every-one in minutes. But they haven’t, which is also astonishing.Tat’s because assaulting peaceulcrowds in a public square demand-ing real democracy – economic andnot just political – would remind the world o the brittle autocrats whobrutalized their people demand-ing justice, beore they collapsed inthe Arab Spring. And the violencehas already backred. Ater policeattacked a march last Saturday that started rom Liberty Plaza, thecrowds only got bigger and mediainterest grew.Te Wall Street occupation hassucceeded in revealing how corpora-tions, politicians, media and policehave ailed us as institutions oer-ing something positive to humanity.Our current leaders tell us they willspread the nancial pain by impos-ing the “Buett Rule,” a tax increasethat asks the wealthy to sacrice theequivalent o a tin o caviar per year.Meanwhile, the rest o us will haveto sacrice healthcare, ood, educa-tion, housing, jobs and perhaps ourlives to eed the erocious appetiteo capital.Tat’s why more and more peo-ple are joining the Wall Street occu-pation. Tey can tell you about theirhomes being oreclosed, months o grinding unemployment or mini-mum-wage dead-end jobs, stagger-ing student debt loads, or trying tolive without decent healthcare. Tey represent a generation o Americans who are told to believe in a systemthat only oers them “Dancing With the Stars” and pepper spray tothe ace. Yet against every description o this generation derided as narcissis-tic, apathetic and hopeless, they arestaking out a claim or all o us –and that’s why we all need to join in:to support this nucleus o a revoltthat could shake America’s powerstructure as much as the Arab world was upended.ens o thousands o peopleneed to be protesting the Wall Streetelite, who are out driving Bent-leys and drinking thousand-dollarchampagne with the money they looted rom the nancial crisis andbailouts as Americans literally dieon the streets.rue, the scene in Liberty Plazamay seem messy and chaotic but it’salso a laboratory o possibility, cre-ating a diversity o ideas, expressionand art.Many people say they supportthe occupation, yet hesitate to join.It’s clear that the biggest obstaclesto building a powerul movementaren’t the police or corporate powers– but our own cynicism and despair.Te views o some were coloredby Te New York imes sayingprotestors were “Gunning or WallStreet with aulty aim.” Many o thecriticisms boil down to “a lack o clear messaging.”But what’s wrong with that? A ully ormed movement is not goingto spring rom the ground. It hasto be created. Tat is why it’s calledgrassroots.Protestors are presenting plenty o sophisticated ideas: end corpo-rate personhood; tax stock trad-ing; nationalize the banks; socializemedicine; und government jobs with a

real

stimulus; lit restrictionson labor organizing; allow cities toturn abandoned homes into publichousing; build a green economy.But how can we get broad agree-ment on any o these? I the protest-ers came with a ready-made set o demands it would have only limitedtheir potential. Tey would haveeither been dismissed as pie in thesky – like socialized medicine ornationalized banks – or something weak such as the Buet Rule, to beco-opted by a ailed political sys-tem that would only undermine themovement.Rather, it is only through com-mon struggle, debate and populardemocracy that we will create genu-ine solutions which have legitimacy. And that is what is occurring downat Wall Street.How many times in lie do youget a chance to not only watch his-tory unold, but to come together with multitudes o people whobelieve in genuine democracy asa reality and not a antasy, and toactively participate in building abetter society?I we ocus on the possibilitiesand shed our despair, our hesitancy and our cynicism, and i we collec-tively come to Wall Street with criti-cal thinking, ideas and solidarity, wecan change the world.For too long our minds havebeen chained by ear, by division, by impotence. Te one thing that mostterries the elite is a great awaken-ing. Tat day is here. ogether, letus seize it.

by

arun

gupta

The message from egypT, syria, Tunisia,spain and england is simple: Join in!rise up! our ansWer To Them has To beyes. and iT has To be yes To each oTher.hoW many Times in life do you geT achance To WaTch hisTory unfold

More than 20,000 Wisconsinitesprotest Gov. Scott Walker’s (R)austerity budget and his attackon collective bargaining. Hun-dreds o students are arrested. Aprotest in Columbus, Ohio againstsimilar attacks on the public sec-tor draws nearly 4,000 protest-ers. Demonstrators at both ralliescarry Egyptian lags and signsdrawing a parallel between theirstruggles.

London

500,000 protestors take toLondon’s streets in the Marchor the Alternative, a movementcoordinated by the Trades UnionCongress. Teachers and publicsector workers hold massivestrikes in support o themovement.

camp in Puerta del Sol, Madrid’scentral square. 30,000 supportersgather or a series o mass assembliesthat put orward popular demands,including a greater say in the politi-cal process and an end to austeritymeasures enacted by the Spanishgovernment.

i

am a 27-year-old journalist living in CrownHeights, Brooklyn. Journalists, as a rule, do notreadily identiy themselves with organizations ormovements. We’re supposed to strive or objectivity.Get the whole story. Look at things rom all sides. Wedon’t want to have our work undermined by any ali-ations. We don’t want to advocate. Tat’s a job or PR reps. Advocacy, to us, is the Dark Side.But I am announcing my solidarity with theOccupy Wall Street movement.On the morning o Wednesday, Sept. 28, I letor Brussels, Wisconsin. It’s your average Midwesternsmall town: population o a ew hundred, one gas sta-tion, a couple o churches and a ew too many bars.Tat’s where my mom and stepdad live. I ew outthere to help them move out o their home. Well, technically, it is no longer their home. Tenew owner is Freddie Mac, which along with Bank o America is kicking my mom and stepdad out o theirhome.Tat house has been in my stepdad’s amily orover 100 years. He and my mom remodeled the placeabout 10 years back. My mom had made sure there were enough bedrooms or when my sisters and I cameback home with grandchildren or her to spoil. Tat’snot going to happen there, now.It is dicult or me to grasp this. I don’t think Iully will until I am nished clearing rooms and lug-ging boxes.It’s hard, and it doesn’t eel right. Didn’t Bank o America get more than $100 billion in bailouts?Didn’t they receive a tax reund o $1.9 billion romthe IRS, alongside the $4.4 billion in 2010 prots? Why do they get saved by the government ater hand-ing out countless high-risk loans, and then again get asaety net rom government-sponsored enterprises likeFreddie Mac when recipients o those loans have todeault? How is this okay?I moved to New York in January o 2010 andlanded an internship at Tomson Reuters in spite o the estering nancial crisis. It was originally supposedto be an unpaid internship, but I convinced them tochange it to an hourly wage. It was also supposed to be20 hours a week, but over time I pushed them to makeit ull-time. By the summer they decided to turn my position into a salaried gig. I was ecstatic.But I wasn’t happy with the work. First o all, it wasn’t journalism. I wrote an internal newsletter. I you were not a Tomson Reuters employee or a program-ming guy at a bank I can guarantee that you never readmy newsletter. Second, it didn’t eel like I was doinggood work. I wrote a monthly newsletter or the com-pany’s global stock network – a complex system thatshoots trade inormation rom stock markets all overthe world to banks and brokers and billionaires.Our clients were among the most powerul peoplein the world.Comort the aficted. Afict the comortable.Tat’s what a journalist strives to do. Me? I was com-orting the comortable.Economist Edward Wol’s work has shown that,as late as 2007, the top 1% o American householdsheld 34.6% o all privately held wealth in the UnitedStates. Within this afuent contingent, Wol notes,the wealth distribution is again hyper-concentrated tothe top .1%. Te vast majority o the households inthis bracket include players in the nance and bankingindustries.Tis bothered me. A lot. My work went against alot o my principles, and this aected my well-being.I grew depressed. I started eating less. My sleep cyclestarted going haywire. I doubled down on my drink-ing habits.Finally, last August, I quit. Since then, I’ve beenreelancing. It’s been great. I’m broke, yeah. But it’sbeen great.I used to cover border issues in Arizona, and I didsome immigration work in southern Mexico. Herein New York, I’ve been gravitating towards the policebeat. Never did I think about covering nance ornational politics. Never did I want to write about ournation’s nancial crisis.But then Freddie Mac and Bank o Americapushed my mom out o her home.So here I am. Committed. o the dialogue. o themovement. o what some o my ellow young menand women camped out in Liberty Plaza are callingTe Revolution.My riends have already told me that I’m crazy.Tat Occupy Wall Street is nothing more than abunch o dirty, jobless kids who have no idea whatthey’re ghting, who are merely beating drums andbarking at cops. But that’s not what I’ve seen.Te movement knows precisely what it is ght-ing. It is ghting the astoundingly unair distributiono wealth in our country while 46 million Americanslive in poverty – and that is by ederal guidelines thatsays a mom and two kids are no longer poor i they make $19,000 a year. It is ghting the reality that WallStreet and Capitol Hill are one in the same. It is ght-ing, tooth and nail, the disintegration o the Americanmiddle class. Simply put, it is ghting greed.I can also tell you that it’s new. Tat structureisn’t yet in place the way some might want it to be.Tat demands have not yet been ully sculpted andarticulated.But the Occupation is only in its second week,and it is gaining more momentum than anyone haddreamed. Numbers continue to grow in that smallsquare. Makeshit beds pepper the western end. Pro-test signs line the north. Someone has set up a library to the east.Beyond that, the rest o the world has begun to pay attention. Food, supplies and donations are streamingin rom well-wishers who cannot occupy the squarethemselves. Doctors are manning the medical station.Lawyers are consulting the recently arrested. Electedocials, musicians and other public gures have comeby to count themselves among the Occupation’s ranks.Tings are moving.I you are a New Yorker, and you haven’t yetstopped by Liberty Plaza – do it. It’s astounding.Te excitement. Te empathy. Te absolute ortitudeo these olks. It almost moves me to tears to standamong them. Tey are there because so many amongus continue to struggle. Tey are there because badthings are happening to good people. Tey are thereor my mother.And when I return to New York this week, I willbe there too.

by

david

kempa

Pushed out of our homes

and into the street

i

n just over ten days, over 40 cities have emergedto join the Occupy Wall Street eort. Eruptingin an astonishing way, this movement is bring-ing together diverse backgrounds and skills to work together to address excessive corporate inuence ingovernment. Browsing through witter, Facebook and Youube, the depth o participation and excitement isright there. Contrasted to the excruciating politickingo Congress, in which solutions, i they are decidedupon, do not go into aect or a year or two, many areeeling the hope that real change can emerge rom thisleaderless movement in which people are leaving theirhomes to occupy thier communities.In New York, we have been witness to the generos-ity o many anonymous people dropping by Liberty Square with donations o ood, medical supplies, tents,tarps and sleeping bags. Helping the campers is notunique to NYC. In Chicago, protesters reported thesame solidarity in the occupation developing outsidethe Chicago Federal Reserve.Meetings are being held almost daily to start anationwide Occupy eort in October; already the listo cities that have signed on is jaw-dropping, and sur-prising. Birmingham. San Diego. Las Vegas. Omaha.Boston. Lexington. San Francisco. Philadelphia. KansasCity. Washington. ampa. Denver. Pittsburgh. Bualo.Charlotte. Richmond. Austin. Salt Lake City. Asheville.Miami. With new occupations popping up every day.I occupiers cannot get answers and solutions romgovernment through the ballot, they will do it throughthe power o their presence in an “inconvenient space.” We are at the beginning o a monumental change inthis country, and the world. Te system won’t changeitsel. It’s up to us: our bodies in the street, our talentsput to work, our passion given lie. Systemic changerequires more than “protesters” and “activists.” You. Youramily. Your riends. Your neighbors. All o us. Now.

by

m

ichael

l

evitin

, g

rim

& j

ed

b

randt

NYC — occpy tg

we occup

bec

corporate tax dodgerbankrupting our ecomy daughter deserves

the world is on the cchange and I plan toscales in favor of all t

I trust people who sleeptrust bankers, traders, orwhen I hear “Grandma, wthe American Rising?” I cstood and said ENOUGH!

the $1 in my pocket iExxonMobil paid in t

the “American Dream”make people work theI can’t fnd a good job evework hard.

The occupation has spread beyond its frst days to include an increasing number o amilies,local union workers, teachers and students rom across the fve boroughs.

OCCUPY_JOURNAL.indd 29/30/11 5:50 PM

17sep

WALL STREET: dAy 1

2,000 people rally in responseto a call to occupy Wall Streetand march to protest corporateinluence in the political process.They set up camp in ZuccottiPark, just north o the New YorkStock Exchange, renaming itLiberty Plaza. Lupe Fiasco do-nates 50 tents in support o theoccupation.

dAy 7

Protestors march to UnionSquare, where police arrest 87people or demonstrating in thestreets, many o whom expressanger over what they perceiveas the unjust execution o TroyDavis three days prior.

Protestors continue daily march-es on Wall Street and join withUnited Postal Service workersat a rally to help protect ederal jobs. On the same day, over 700Continental and United pilotsdemonstrate in ront o WallStreet. Over the next two days,the General Assembly o New York City approves a Declarationo the Occupation, see above.

ither you join the revolt takingplace on Wall Street and in thenancial districts o other cit-ies across the country or you stand on the wrong side o history.Either you obstruct, in the only ormlet to us, which is civil disobedience, theplundering by the criminal class on WallStreet and accelerated destruction o theecosystem that sustains the human species,or become the passive enabler o a mon-strous evil. Either you taste, eel and smellthe intoxication o reedom and revolt orsink into the miasma o despair and apa-thy. Either you are a rebel or a slave.Choose. But choose ast. Te state andcorporate orces are determined to crushthis. Tey are not going to wait or you.Tey are terried this will spread.Tey have their long phalanxes o policeon motorcycles, their rows o white paddy wagons and their metal barricades set upon every single street leading into the New York nancial district where the suits useyour money, money they stole rom you, togamble and speculate and gorge themselves while one in our children outside thosebarricades depend on ood stamps to eat.Speculation in the 17th century wasa crime. Speculators were hanged. oday they run the state and the nancial markets.Tey disseminate the lies that pollute ourairwaves. Tey know, even better than you,how pervasive the corruption and thet havebecome, how gamed the system is againstyou, how corporations have cemented intoplace a thin oligarchic class and an obsequi-ous cadre o politicians, judges and journal-ists who live in their little gated Versailles while 6 million Americans are thrown outo their homes, a million people a year gobankrupt because they cannot pay theirmedical bills and 45,000 die rom lack o proper care; where real joblessness is spiral-ing to over 20 percent, where the citizens,including students, spend lives toiling indebt working dead-end jobs, when they have jobs, in a world devoid o hope, a world o masters and sers.Te only word these corporations know is more. Tey are disemboweling every lastsocial service program unded by the taxpay-ers, rom education to Social Security, becausethey want that money themselves. Let the sick die. Let the poor go hungry. Let amilies betossed in the street. Let the unemployed rot.Let children in the inner city or rural waste-lands learn nothing and live in misery andear. Let the students nish school with no jobs and no prospects o jobs. Let the prisonsystem, the largest in the industrial world,expand to swallow up all potential dissent-ers. Let torture continue. Let teachers, police,reghters, postal employees and social work-ers join the ranks o the unemployed. Let theroads, bridges, dams, levees, power grids, raillines, subways, bus services, schools and librar-ies crumble or close. Let the rising tempera-tures o the planet, the reak weather patterns,the hurricanes, the droughts, the ooding, thetornadoes, the melting polar ice caps, the poi-soned water systems, the polluted air increaseuntil the species dies.I you do not shake o the 1% very, very soon they will kill you. And they will killthe ecosystem, dooming your children andyour children’s children. So either you riseup and dismantle the corporate state or a world o sanity – where we no longer kneelbeore the absurd idea that the demandso nancial markets should govern humanbehavior – or we are rog-marched towardsel-annihilation.Tose on the streets around Wall Streetare the physical embodiment o hope. Tey know that hope has a cost, that it is noteasy or comortable, that it requires sel-sacrice and discomort and nally aith.Tey sleep on concrete every night. Teirclothes are soiled. Tey have tasted ear,been beaten, gone to jail, been blindedby pepper spray, cried, hugged each other,laughed, sung, talked too long in generalassemblies, seen their chants drit upwardto the oce towers above them, wonderedi it is worth it, i anyone cares, i they will win. But as long as they remain steadastthey point the way out o the corporatelabyrinth. Tis is what it means to be alive.Tey are the best among us.

by

chris

hedges

N xc l.

iT’s now oR neveR

y

use

s who we bailed out areomy again.

@usuncut

a better uture.

@jstlilone

sp of greathelp tip theat is good.

n the street more than Ioliticians.

@critmasspanic

here were you duringn say “On the frst day I”

@Timcast

s more than GE, BP andaxes last year.

@usuncut

is a slogan created tomselves to death.

@yarazza

n though I am willing to

ot granted.

@reverendmanny

g used to justiyeed, and war.

@protestchaplain

ed up we are. We don’temocracy.

@sir_younis

erve better thenotteries to get into a

c

ds a new Revolution”

sh_anderson

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s we gather together in solidar-ity to express a eeling o massinjustice, we must not lose sighto what brought us together. We write sothat all people who eel wronged by thecorporate orces o the world can know that we are your allies. As one people, united, we acknowl-edge the reality: that the uture o thehuman race requires the cooperation o its members; that our system must pro-tect our rights, and upon corruption o that system, it is up to the individualsto protect their own rights, and thoseo their neighbors; that a democraticgovernment derives its just power romthe people, but corporations do notseek consent to extract wealth rom thepeople and the Earth; and that no truedemocracy is attainable when the pro-cess is determined by economic power. We come to you at a time when corpo-rations, which place prot over people,sel-interest over justice, and oppressionover equality, run our governments. Wehave peaceably assembled here, as is ourright, to let these acts be known.Tey have taken our houses throughan illegal oreclosure process, despite nothaving the original mortgage.Tey have taken bailouts rom tax-payers with impunity, and continue togive Executives exorbitant bonuses.Tey have perpetuated inequality anddiscrimination in the workplace basedon age, the color o one’s skin, sex, gen-der identity and sexual orientation.Tey have poisoned the ood supply through negligence, and undermined thearming system through monopolization.Tey have proted o o the tor-ture, connement, and cruel treatmento countless nonhuman animals, andactively hide these practices.Tey have continuously sought tostrip employees o the right to negoti-ate or better pay and saer workingconditions.Tey have held students hostage withtens o thousands o dollars o debt oneducation, which is itsel a human right.Tey have consistently outsourcedlabor and used that outsourcing as lever-age to cut workers’ healthcare and pay.Tey have inuenced the courts toachieve the same rights as people, withnone o the culpability or responsibility.Tey have spent millions o dollarson legal teams that look or ways to getthem out o contracts in regards to healthinsurance.Tey have sold our privacy as acommodity.Tey have used the military andpolice orce to prevent reedom o thepress.Tey have deliberately declined torecall aulty products endangering livesin pursuit o prot.Tey determine economic policy,despite the catastrophic ailures theirpolicies have produced and continue toproduce.Tey have donated large sums o money to politicians supposed to beregulating them. Tey continue to block alternate orms o energy to keep usdependent on oil.Tey continue to block generic ormso medicine that could save people’s livesin order to protect investments that havealready turned a substantive prot.Tey have purposely covered up oilspills, accidents, aulty bookkeeping, andinactive ingredients in pursuit o prot.Tey purposeully keep people misin-ormed and earul through their controlo the media.Tey have accepted private contractsto murder prisoners even when presented with serious doubts about their guilt.Tey have perpetuated colonialismat home and abroad. Tey have partici-pated in the torture and murder o inno-cent civilians overseas.Tey continue to create weapons o mass destruction in order to receive gov-ernment contracts. *o the people o the world, We, the New York City General Assembly occupying Wall Street inLiberty Square, urge you to assert yourpower.Exercise your right to peaceably assemble; occupy public space; createa process to address the problems weace, and generate solutions accessible toeveryone.o all communities that take actionand orm groups in the spirit o directdemocracy, we oer support, documen-tation, and all o the resources at ourdisposal. Join us and make your voices heard!